Neanderthals' demise caused by modern human invasion

steddyeddy wrote: »

In my opinion you cant classify some of the higher order primates as strictly nocturnal or diurnal. Neandethal and many other hominids may have reduced competition with other higher order primates by hunting at night. This doesnt require biology adaptations for a clever animal. Just look at humans and look up the term hunters moon, native americans like many other tribes hunted by moonlight. This is not out of the question for a hominid. The other options are matuinal (hunting pre dawn) or vespertine (hunting at dusk).

Oh I agree, but when you have a hominid with the largest eyes known and a very large area in the skull related to the visual cortex it does suggest maybe some local adaptation to low light levels. Modern Europeans have the biggest eyes in moderns a possible adaptation to lower light levels at higher latitudes or maybe some holdover from Neandertals? Our eyes certainly got larger the longer we were in Europe. Yea I certainly wouldn't suggest nocturnal as a primary strategy. As you say humans are very adaptable and I've no doubt those lads were too. Dusk/dawn is an adaptive possibility though.

Regarding the look of the neanderthals I really dont think they looked like a particularly well built rugby player. I think they would have looked like a far more athletic powerlifter with a huge chest, arms and a tapered waist built on short but stocky legs their size would have been close to ape like in my opinion.

I'd feel the same with less of the apelike part.

Another thing to look at is the chance that neanderthals had an epicanthic fold as seen in many asian and inuit populations. The reason I say this is the epicanthic cold according to some the epicanthic fold developed in response to tribes traveling through snowing areas and the extra skin fold was thought to reflect some of the light. Neanderthals themselves were a cold adapted species so maybe this is possible?

Possible indeed. Epicanthic folds are a very old feature in moderns. Not just in cold regions. San Bushmen have them and many of the "Negritos" of the Andaman islands also possess them. Both relict African populations. Rather than cold, it may be a high intensity light adaptation. Like you say light levels in snowy regions are even higher than desert/tropical regions because of all the reflected light. IE Snow blindness. It may also be an even earlier relic/quirk and not an adaptation. IIRC foetuses of all populations have them in the womb? Asians living in quite different environments for at least 100,000 years still have them. You would think if it was a cold adaptation they would have lost them? Maybe these features were in all early hominds at some point, with the Europeans and Africans losing the feature? As for Neandertals having them? Possibly, but my bet would be if they ever find one frozen in ancient permafrost he or she won't have them. Why? Because of my take on their low light adaptations and the consideration that unlike many of the reconstructions you see they weren't particularly tundra peoples. They're not ancient Eskimos in habit or environment.

Adam Khor wrote: »

I think I've read somewhere that they actually had very wide waists compared to us humans...

Yea defo more square rather than inverted triangle alright.

allibastor wrote: »

no, there has been good evidence that neanderthal man did use spears and the like. they have found small evidence of spears with stone heads on them also, so i would strongly say that they used spears and other throwing devices. i am just saying that sapiens were better equiped for it is all. we were more long range hunters suited for flatter areas, like grass land or the like. as i said above just My opinion, but from the look of the skeletal frame of neandethal man v sapiens of that time, it looks like the frame would have been more suited to areas like hills, or forests, where strenght would have been more advantageous than speed or stamina.

There is maybe a third option. Especially when dealing with some of the huge animals they took down. Rather than an instant explosive kill, maybe the ambush was a severe wounding exercise? Leap at animal, stab it deeply, retreat and then track it until it dies from it's wounds. Maybe the injuries some of these guys sustained were when the retreat wasn't fast enough? The notion that most kills were on the spot stabbing and wrestling of very powerful animals seems terribly dramatic and costly to me. Even folks as powerful as them wouldn't last that long considering the size and power of some of their prey if this was the consistent hunting theme. Given they likely needed 4000 calories a day(and up) to survive, that's an awful lot of exposure to danger. I personally suspect they had their own version of stamina. Stab, wound, retreat, follow, finish the kill. I reckon they were pretty good walkers and maybe low level joggers.

Another possible reason for one bit of odd behaviour seen in them. They were cannibals. Most Neandertal skeletons show defleshing. Now to our psyches this is taboo and indicates a vicious unfeeling barbaric mind, but maybe not if we step back. For a start they needed food and lots of it. Meat is meat and eating members of the group or starving, members of the group it is. Like men adrift in lifeboats without food will eat others if pushed. Triple your hunger and calorie needs and cannibalism seems a good adaptation. It may well have been reverential(like some tribes today) to wrap up the need. But and it's a big but set against that deep need they appear to have been very caring with injured members of their groups. More than us at the time. These were sometimes "useless" members and another voracious mouth to feed. The Old man of Chapelle a good example. Riddled with arthritis and pain, a shambling man of little use in a close in hunt and like that for a long time. One arm had been lost and what was left atrophied(his other arm compensated though). Barely a tooth in his head so someone would have had to chew his food for him. Yet he lived 20 years without his arm and at least five without teeth. The two things kinda jar. So for me the cannibalism wasn't our idea of it. It was a practical thing and maybe loving thing. It also suggests that either this "old man" and others were still useful in a wounding exercise and/or they transmitted information and wisdom that made them very valuable, which suggests a bigger language ability. Which almost by definition would have to include past tense as well as judging the future tense.

on the strenght item, yes i agree that older sapiens were more robust than us now, we are weak by comparison, but i am just looking at previous evidence of the frame of both, neanderthal man would have been a bit stronger, and if combined with an ambush approach to hunting would have made them very effective at this. that would be funny however, neanderthal versus cage figher like brock lesnar!!!! though it would be hard to spot the dsifference.

Well to be fair to earlier points they would have been significantly stronger. Experiments by a sports scientist with an interest in this appears to show that compared to the world champion arm wrestling champion, a young Neandertal woman would be 10-15% stronger than him. She'd beat him pretty easily and she was unlikely to have been the strongest lassie in the group. A Neandertal man in his prime? He estimated at least 50% stronger, maybe more. Poor old Brock would be... well in trouble by a Neandertal woman and would have to hope technique won out and she didn't get a hold of him. A Neandertal man in his prime? I think the technical term among cage fighters would be seriously fcuked up very quickly. Punching him in the head would barely make a dent. Chest shots? Nope. If they locked hands? Game over. Neandertals forearm muscles were so strong that their arm bones bent with the pressure as they matured. Word to the wise to any time travelers out there, shaking hands may be friendly, but I'd wave myself. Oh and bring cake. Lots of cake. A cured ham or two would go over nicely. Slimfast shakes not so much.

Porkupine73 wrote: »

I'm very interested in this idea that Sapiens-sapiens only mixed genes with the Near-Eastern Neanderthal population. I had not heard that level of detail considered before; although I did note that people spoke of the Near-East (in the first few tens of thousands of years of behaviorally modern humans' dispersal from Africa) as being when and where moderns and Eurasian Archaics first met and interbred, I hadn't read anywhere that the genetic information that's been analyzed had shown that gene-mixing with more northern populations was ruled out. Does someone have a link to that info?

I'm sure I have somewhere. I'll try and dig some up. Yea it seems on the evidence so far that we only mixed in that window. The Neandertal genes we retain are from a middle eastern Levant population, not the European population. One report I read also suggested that the mixing was coming from male Neandertal to female Sapiens, not the other way around. God knows what that means? Maybe the genes going the other way have just faded out, maybe Neandertal females weren't as "attractive" to Sapien males, maybe it speaks of a cultural thing where younger women are traded out to other tribes, maybe this admixture wasn't consensual and Neandertals raped Sapien women? Interesting though.

Also, I wonder if there was interbreeding with African species of Archaics before Moderns' dispersal (because I've been wondering if modern African people, like the rest of the world, has in their genetics some links to admixture with African Archaics that hasn't been teased out yet).

I'd personally put money on it. African folks have the deepest genetic heritage of any humans alive today and I'm 100% sure (as a hunch:)) that a good chunk of that came from previous folks in the same continent. Moderns are supposed to have sprung into existence some 200 odd 1000 years ago in north east Africa. I'm quite sure at the time that there were relict populations in the rest of Africa. It's a huge continent with all sorts of natural barriers then and now. As we spread out from that start point the popular notion follows us "out of Africa" along the coasts into Asia, but seems to completely ignore what we were doing in Africa itself. We were just as likely to be running down the African coasts too, meeting people along the way and getting jiggy with them.

Recently, I've been thinking that some of our Moderns' genetic diversity may have occurred outside of our direct lineage, and that these extra-sapiens contributions will be able to be identified (possibly), much like how our Neanderthal heritage has been. Of course, if DNA cannot be extracted from non-sapiens bones, any comparison and identification would have to (?) be done by internal comparison (comparison of extant Modern genomes).

I think some are actually doing that at the moment with African genetics and IIRc have some tantalising clues of much earlier DNA popping up.

One thing I've learned in the last couple of years: Grey wolves do not tolerate coyotes in their territory (although hybrids do occur in nature). Shades of Neanderthal/Modern Human? ;-)

Funny enough... What has interested me is our respective living arrangements. In the middle east where we were making whoopy:) we lived together for around 10,000 years. In that time we lived in the same habitats and in the same caves/dwelling areas, often swapping back and forth. We were neighbours so to speak. However when we move into Europe things are different. Neandertals tend to favour the valley floors, we tend to favour higher ground. We're not nearly as similar in living arrangements. Our arrangements do look a bit defensive or offensive to me. TBH I really noticed this when I compared Ireland to other European countries, especially in southern Europe. Many towns in the latter are situated on the tops of hills as a defensive thing against the many invasions that have taken place over 1000's of years. In Ireland by contrast you don't see that to nearly the same degree. MOst towns are in the valleys, not perched on hilltops. Why? Because we've been invaded/fought over significantly fewer times than say Italy. It just made me think about living arrangements waaaay back in the day. If you're all living together on the same "level", you don't see threat, if you're living at different levels you do, or at least you see difference. Which may explain why no DNA from that European period is showing up.

On this note, does anyone have any guesses about the likely average group-size of Neanderthals? I've often read the number 50 used as an average for early humans, which is pretty large. Wolf packs are typically larger than coyote packs, who function more like a nuclear family.

IIRC Sapiens had bigger. The evidence from Neandertals is that they were smaller closely related bands.

Adam Khor wrote: »

What can you tell us about the differences (like, anatomical-physiological or whatever) between African folks and the rest of us? Some say there are actually several important differences although it seems that today, talking about such things is "racist"...
And if it is true that there are differences, are these purely the result of adaptation to a particular lifestyle/habitat, or could some of them be inherited from non-sapiens ancestors?

IMHO any differences are local adaptation, just like all humans. The more subtle differences in things like immuno response or "junk dna" markers may be from relicts. Maybe more obvious ones like the single eyelid thing that San Bushmen have are relict? They're usually more associated with Asians. Physiological changes can be very recent. Look at Inuit folks. They have significantly more capillaries in the face and hands as a cold adaptation compared to Africans. Europeans would be in the middle. Horse for courses. Then again our external evolution through technology renders these things mostly moot. A skinny heat adapted lad from Kenya dolled up in the best of Goretex and the like is sitting pretty. Though likely not too happy about it. I once saw a TV program from the UK where they got British people from different "race" backgrounds and exposed them to different environments. They brough IIRC a West Indian, a Scot and an Oriental lad out on a trawler in the North Sea. They all stood on the deck until it got too cold for each person. The black lad was indoors pretty damn quick, rapidly turning blue, the Asian guy was better, but it was the pasty Scot who was swanning about barely chilled. Then again we're all so variable. If you had added me to that boat Id' have been inside near death long before the West Indian bloke. I can't take the cold at all. Never could. Just like my dad before me. I'll happily hang out in 110degrees but slightly chilly and I'm crying like a baby. And I have 4% Neandertal DNA. Yea thanks a bunch lads, clearly I got the "junk". I'm such a throwback I've even got an extra lower vertebra

Then you look at the diversity within Africa itself. As well as the deepest genetics they also have the most diverse. About the only thing in common they have is dark skin and brown eyes. European by comparison are much more related to each other at the genetic level. Where Europeans do differ is in the diversity of their phenotype. European external appearance is about the most varied of modern humans. The old racist line of "oh the Chinese, they all look alike to me", while daft, because Asian folks vary a lot, that variability is more subtle in the obvious ways. Take hair colour. East Asians are nearly always black straight haired and brown eyed. Europeans can be blonde, red, all the way to jet black, never mind going from extremely curly to laser straight. Eye colour can range from near silver, through brown, green, blue, even violet. Skin colour can go from Dracula pale with freckles to very dark. And you can even get that variability within a family. Clearly there was a strong selection pressure in Europeans in the last 40,000 years to give rise to these outward differences.

Makes sense if they were more adapted as predators...

Funny enough evidence from things like their stone tools that in some cases show heavy soil wear suggest they were big gatherers of carb rich roots as much as the usual picture of them as tundra hunters. Recently some researchers have retrieved grain residue from between their teeth showing that they were collecting and processing grains at times too. Primitive biscuits. Neandertals eating Jacobs digestives. Makes sense given their purported heavy calorie requirements(though personally I reckon that's exaggerated). Yes they were tundra hunters at times, but they lived so long in so many different and variable environments that was only a small part of their box of tricks. For me that's what makes our cousins decline and extinction even more puzzling. They survived and thrived for more than 200,000 years in hugely variable climates. Indeed if you add pre Neandertals like Homo Heidelbergensis to the mix(which I personally would), they were doing so for even longer.